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Ambi ValentFebruary 9, 2015 at 6:28 PM
Are there new telescopes coming which will help find dwarf planets? (I know there's Gaia, but its mission is rather to find stars and brown dwarfs)
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AnonymousFebruary 10, 2015 at 6:15 PM
Dr. Brown,
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Thanks for the many years of work culminating in many discoveries that resulted in a better understanding of the solar system we are a part of. Best wishes in your new endevours or projects. May your future be as productive!
Mike -
i really do not see that sidebar of Creationism/ Science as one we should care to discuss. Religion should be a private thing between ourselves and our idea on "necessary being", and whatever it may be interesting to discuss if at all, it should certainly be discuss in an appropiate (sp?) venue NOT HERE. IMHO
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AnonymousFebruary 22, 2015 at 1:38 PM
're. a name for 2007 0R10, why not call it Brigid, as that Irish goddess's name means exalted or on high, and it's extremely far away out in the solar system - and, it's a beautiful Goddess who's the chief goddess of my country and I would love it �� Why not honour some Irish/Celtic mythology?
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I see that we (NASA's Dawn spacecraft) have reached the world Ceres.
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(Hat tip to Isaac Asimov for the pun!)
Is Dr. Brown in on that, or just watching?
(And is it possible to get "custom" photos taken by any of the Mars Rovers, etc.? I'd love to get one, at Jovan opposition, with a newly risen (or setting) Jupiter over a twilit Martian landscape. Should be awesome.) -
UnknownMarch 26, 2015 at 7:22 AM
ya'll need to do a piece on this... its a film i made with a lot of people to push the public to stand their ground with the police but in a right manner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv7E5KF5Xxo
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AnonymousApril 20, 2015 at 2:08 AM
Pluto was givenanew name, USMI, (Enuma Elish) meaning He Who Shows the Way, also Sedna and new Sedna like orbit of 2012 VP 113 show, (their main exes) cca the same way,....of X,..they have nearly intersection of orbits,..it could be good to look near those perihelia,..or in exact opposite direction,... Pavel Smutny,....
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AnonymousMay 11, 2015 at 9:56 PM
Could Eris be worth sending a mission near? I've been doing a lot of research but it doesn't seem like we know much about this dwarf planet. Even NASA didn't have much information on it. I understand it is not likely ever going to happen, but it would be good to expand our knowledge of our solar system by going to one of the farthest objects in our solar system. If I am correct, It's orbit goes to the very edge or beyond the Kuiper Belt. It would certainly be a better idea to send a mission to Eris than other places, Eris is the most unique. The data could also be compared to that of Pluto, who is said to be it's "twin". I know no one may reply because this was posted a while ago but I find the topic of Eris really interesting.
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ReggieMay 11, 2015 at 10:29 PM
Yes, indeed. A probe to Eris, or any of the other trans-Plutonian "planets" would be great. Of course, it's slightly impossible just now, as we have no easy way to get to space as we used to with the Shuttle. But if we had a way to put a probe in Earth orbit, then a relatively cheap ion engine could push the probe out to wherever. It might take a decade or two, of course.
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Now if any of the "warp drives" in the news recently could actually work (not holding my breath, but still...) then even if we could only get to half the speed of light, the trip would take days, not decades; and even a maned excursion becomes possible if not plausible. I think Dr. Miguel Alcubierre's work shows the most promise. (See Wikipedia, of course...) While it might not offer FTL speeds, chugging along at half the speed of light would be just fine for exploring the Solar System. -
TreesongMay 21, 2015 at 8:31 PM
I just wrote an enthusiastic review of How I Killed Pluto for my National Puzzlers' League fanzine, in which I noted wordplay items of interest (e.g., 'Quaoar' is a letter change of 'quasar'). I couldn't think of one for Dysnomia, so I used an NPL application to find that it's a transdeletion (anagram with one letter deleted) of 'moon daisy'. Nice. That's another name for the 'common daisy' or 'oxeye daisy', Leucanthemum vulgare. Also of 'Mondayish' but that's not as interesting.
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Maja Zwicky-Saudhi, MaldivesJuly 2, 2015 at 11:06 PM
A thought about life on other planets: What if life forms on other planets do not need the same amount of water, temperature, oxygen etc as e do, but have exactly the amount of gas, temperature and life-giving elements they need in their environment?
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ReggieJuly 3, 2015 at 11:59 AM
Well, sure; any life form will evolve to suit its environment. Cold places will have creatures adapted to the cold, warm places will have creatures adapted to the warmth; likewise wet, and dry.
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The thing is, wherever there is Life, there must be enough energy to sustain it. This is why there is such a vigorous ecosystem gathered around the thermal vents at the bottom of the sea: energy sustains Life; so more energy, more life. (To a point, of course!) -
UnknownAugust 5, 2015 at 9:12 PM
What is expected to be the next large survey data set to use that is significantly more sensitive to faint objects? Second, would your approach have picked up bight objects at, say 100 AU? Given the algorithm depends on motion, at what distance is the motion simply too slow to trigger a recognition event ?
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UnknownOctober 16, 2015 at 11:22 AM
Is your search algorithm available for others to use/improve for future searches?
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Mike BrownOctober 16, 2015 at 11:28 AM
The old algorithm doesn't exist anymore, I suspect. But we've got new ones we're working on that we will make open source, I think. If we can figure out how....
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And, for @unknown: most of our searches are senstive to ~120 AU or so. We've done some specialized searches for more distant things, but so far haven't found them. -
AnonymousFebruary 2, 2016 at 5:58 PM
Hello,
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Sorry if this is off-topic. I just finished reading your book, I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading about the transition to the digital astronomy was very interesting for me. I remember reading James Herriot's books a long time ago, I was similarly fascinated by his description of the many major transitions going on in his profession (okay, now this is definitely off-topic). I'm going to remember the part about the sign language for infants -- for the future, just in case.
I couldn't help wondering about a couple of things. One is when you mention that the coordinates of Xena and Easterbunny were found by someone else as well and sent to "the place where you announce discoveries". Does that mean that it was sent anonymously? Because if it was sent by the same Spanish team, I think nobody would be able to argue a coincidence. Also, does it mean that if the authorities had formally followed the protocol, the guys who sent the announcement would have been recognized (at least initially) as the discoverers of Xena and Easterbunny?
The second thing is that I couldn't help thinking that maybe it would have been possible to use more advanced methods than flipping between two images to detect the differences. Morphological image processing was well developed at that time already, so wouldn't it make sense to, say, find morphological components in the image and discard the artifacts based on their shape measurements?
Please explain the object sighted in antarctica in the sky after sundown. The video is on YouTube, it's bright enough to light up the sky for four hours and looks like daytime. Also what's with several sightings of a second sun , youtube again.
ReplyDeleteProbably Venus--its the brightest object in the sky after the sun and our Moon and is currently an evening "star"
DeleteMany of those Antarctica youtube videos show the over-exposed moon and claim it is Nibiru. They are more interested in drawing in viewers than presenting the truth.
DeleteThanks for the update, Dr. Brown. The next decade should improve the odds, right, with the LSST, JWST and TMT (especially LSST) coming on?
ReplyDeleteP.S.: So now researchers are using lame acronyms for papers as well? ;)
The Oort Cloud could very well be teeming with small planets like Eris. These telescopes may very well inaugurate a new era of outer solar system discoveries.
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